Brayden and Kristen, in the Multipurpose Room after class

Anyone who has been to Laura's Center for the Arts on a Monday morning has probably had the chance to meet Brayden Hum.  This energetic and friendly little guy is a regular for the Monday morning Music and Me class with his mom, Kristen Stewart.  Kristen has worked for the Y for a number of years, over at what Brayden refers to as "Mommy's Y" or the main branch here at the Emilson Y, but Brayden joins us over here at the LCA, which he has cutely dubbed "Tyler's Y".

I got a chance to sit down and talk with Brayden and Kristen a bit about what they've been doing at Tyler's Y...I mean the LCA. Brayden asked a lot of questions, as he usually does, so it was a fun chance to get sit and talk to him!

Kristen and Brayden have participated in Music and Me as well as our Toddler Art class.  Kristen felt that it was important to expose Brayden to a variety of things, and music was one that she felt was not her forte, so they signed up for music class, and Brayden had such a good connection that they have been signing up ever since!

Brayden's favorite part of class is when we sing "I Saw a Little Bunny", a simple finger play that proves a challenge for the fine motor skills of the class, but as we progress we get more and more two finger bunnies! Kristen's favorite part of class is when Brayden, who is often quieter in class, sings the songs at home "just like Tyler".  The repetition of the class is designed just for that purpose, to teach the students (and parents) songs and music games they can do at home!

Brayden loves to help clean up! He's a great helper!

In the future Kristen would like to see us running programs that include literature incorporated into the program, much in the way that it had been in Toddler Art and in the way that we do in Musical Mavericks, and to see us taking some of our classes onto the outdoor stage as the weather gets nicer.  Coming to work to dance and sing songs outside...? I like the sound of that!

Kristen loves the space and the artwork that changes on a monthly basis, allowing her and Brayden to be exposed to things that they otherwise wouldn't.  So come on over and check out what we have going on at Laura's Center for the Arts, and if you're here on Monday morning, be ready for Brayden to ask you questions!

Slime!... or Gak!... or Flubber!... or Goop! or... one of the other millions of names I've heard for this ooey gooey material that is easy to make at home with just a couple of ingredients.  Last Friday I whipped some up for the toddlers in my "Explore the Arts" class and after some slight hesitation, they were on board with the stuff. The amazing thing about this material is that although we are calling it "slime," it actually isn't messy to play with so this is something that can be done without much worry of a mess right at your kitchen table.

Here is what you need:

• Elmer's Glue (8 oz bottle)
• Borax (a powdered soap, sometimes hard to find in grocery stores so here is a link to some you can order online.)
• Large mixing bowl
• Spoon
• Cup
• Measuring cup
• Food coloring
• Water

When I made this I followed these directions pretty loosely, adding things as I saw fit to get the consistency I wanted.

1. Empty the entire bottle of glue into the mixing bowl.  Fill the empty bottle with warm water and shake.  Pour the glue-water mixture into the mixing bowl and stir well with a spoon.
2. Add some food coloring and stir.
3. Into your cup add 1/2 cup of warm water along with a teaspoon of Borax.  Stir until slightly dissolved.
4. While stirring the glue mixture in the bowl, slowly add the water-Borax mixture in your cup.  This will begin to change the glue mixture into something a little bit more rubbery.  Once you have most of the glue mixture moving towards a rubbery state, ditch the spoon and dig in with your hands!
5. Continue mixing with your hands, adding more of the Water-Borax solution to make it more rubbery and more glue to slime it up a bit.
6. Play!
7. Cover, this stuff will dry up when left to the open air. A plastic bag will do the trick.

There are so many fun ways to play with slime with a toddler.  Just exploring with out much intervention at all will keep kids entertained for at least 10 minutes, which can be an impressive amount of time for some of our little ones.  To push this play time a little bit longer I introduced some simple baking tools, rolling pins and cookie cutters.  Another fun thing to do is to hide things inside of the slime for your child to dig out.  Anything from smooth pebbles to small plastic dinosaur toys will work for something like this.  We also played with the slime by stuffing as much of it as we could into little cups (I had some left over play-dough cups from some that had dried out) and were pleasantly surprised at the noise that came out of the cup, "It tooted!" exclaimed one of our toddlers on Friday with bright excited eyes.  And ya, it did, so we all just had to laugh and agree with him on that one.  Keep this slime covered when you are finished it and it should last you for a little while.  A plastic bag will do, but I have seen it stored inside of those plastic Easter eggs which can be added fun if you have a dinosaur hidden inside of your slime.

Enjoy and post any pictures of your slime making to our facebook page facebook.com/SSYARTS

There are feathers in the arts center. So. Many. Feathers. They have breezed into every corner and doorway, settled down in bathroom stalls, and slid under the door to my office while I was out. Why the feathers? Well, a herd of birds and jungle creatures have been setting up shop here every evening this week and they shed like crazy! Capachione School of Performing Arts (CSPA) is currently in residence at LCA, putting up their production of Seussical. We're excited to be partnering with them on the creation of the set since we have just a couple more weeks before our own production of the same play hits the stage here. How perfect is that? It is also very cool to see how another director and another group of talented kids have taken on this show. Theatre creates community wherever it goes and we're happy to expand the little community we've created with CSPA.

CSPA, based in East Bridgewater, opened in 1986, and they offer classes, take part in theatre competitions and, of course, put up their own theatre productions regularly. If you're interested in checking them out at LCA this weekend stop by today or tomorrow for their 7PM performance or Sunday for the performance at 6PM.

OR hold out for our very own production opening on Friday, April 4 at 7PM. These kids from all over the South Shore are incredibly talented and you don't want to miss hearing them belt out the fun, quirky, beautiful music of Seussical. Tickets are on sale now at the Emilson YMCA front desk and will be available at the door too (if we don't sell out!).

Meghan Dinsmore’s studio is located on the 3rd floor of the E.T. Write building in Rockland, MA and is a part of the 4^thFloor Artist Association.  She has been an art teacher at Marshfield High for 9 years while continuing her studio practice and showing her artwork at a number of places, including Laura’s Center for the Arts in August 2013.  Dinsmore received both her undergraduate and graduate degrees at Boston University in Painting and Art Education and has continued her education through workshops and classes at some of the top arts colleges in New England such as Massachusetts College of Art and Design and New Hampshire Institute of Art.  

The first thing you’ll notice when you walk into Meghan Dinsmore’s studio is the huge variety of artwork.  This is in part because she shares her large space with her husband Dan Talbot and friend Shannon McDonald.  That is not the whole story on the variety though; Dinsmore’s work alone could easily be mistaken for the work of multiple artists.  She is not bound by style, which is a liberating idea, although it of course is not quite as simple as that.  I think that there is a certain stigma in the art world about not zeroing in on one style and there is evidence of this in the repeated questions Dinsmore must field relating to this topic.  “Why do you bounce around so much?”, “what is your true style?”, and “you made that too?” are familiar conversation starters for this exploratory artist.  Dinsmore is interested in form and in shattering form, a process which must be fundamentally fluid and diverse.

pen and ink drawing in a 7x12" sketchbook

Dinsmore tells me, “it is important to me that I know the rules before I break the rules.” Look at these beautiful peeks through her sketchbook.  Each done in about 45 minutes, they serve as a daily warm up.  Working as a high school art teacher, Dinsmore says “these daily drawings are great motivators for my students.  When they say they don’t have time to finish something, I can point to these drawings and tell them I only needed 45 minutes, so do they.  At the same time though, these drawings keep my on my toes with their expanding skill level.  Being their teacher, I feel like I need to stay one step ahead of them which isn't always easy with some of the talent in my school. Keeping current with my practice helps me do that.”

Some bird explorations with pen and acrylic wash on wood panel
Approximately 6x6"

Portraits in acrylic
Each approximately 3x4'

These large painted portraits are another example of Dinsmore flexing her art muscles and pushing herself to see what she could do.  After taking about 10 years off of doing “college style paintings,” mainly large scale realistic works, she was questioning whether or not she could still pull it off.  She decided to grab a few of the people closest to her and test it out.  Turns out she could still do it, and do it really well at that.  She was now assured that she “knew the rules,” and was ready to take a jump.

Brayer drawings in acrylic on paper
Each is 22x30"

This next series of pieces was done based off of memories and photos.  Here, Dinsmore is interested in capturing what a faded memory looks like. After a workshop at New Hampshire Institute of Art on passing over brushes and instead painting with brayers, she had the perfect tool for this series.  A tool that could glide paint across a surface while maintaining a hardness to prevent too much detail from creeping in.  This is, in a way, how we experience memories- fluid, changing, and the further away they are, the less clear.  This series was based off of some photos dug up in an old family treasure trove and each have charming stories to go along with them.  The painting of the shirtless man is based off of a photo of Dinsmore’s grandfather, taken while he was stationed overseas in the military during World War II.  He took the photo himself and sent it home to her grandmother with a note reading, “For my honey, to look at and sigh.” We only have this one endearing piece of the story and Dinsmore does not fill in any gaps for us visually.  She likes that, “you can put your own interpretation into these paintings, and they could be anyone’s grandfather in any place.” 

This series of brayer drawings is where I think Dinsmore’s work really pulls together.  And by “together,” I don’t mean that the brayer drawings are her “true style."  What I mean is that I can see the full circle of her process from an important and new angle: time.  You’ll notice, in the daily sketches the viewer gets a quick and clear look at what is directly in front of this artist no matter how mundane it may be.  The drawings are completed in a short amount of time and their closeness to us in time means that they are recent memories and so their depiction is vibrant.  The large scale portraits take us slightly further back in time, as Dinsmore is working from instances that are not quite as immediate as what is sitting directly in front of her.  These paintings are vivid and easily read, but pay attention to the background.  Things get blurred and distorted in the back with a more playful feeling in color and texture.  There is even a bit of work with brayers.  Then we come to the brayer drawings and are pushed further away in both time and in realistic representation.  These pieces give us a peak at what they are about while allowing us to fill in the rest of the information for ourselves.  This is how Dinsmore works intuitively. By looking at her vast body of work we are able to find these connecting threads.

I think a better question to ask this artist is not anything to do with the disconnectedness of her work.  Perhaps a more insightful questions is, "how are you going to explore these ideas next?"

All through school, I loved talent shows. My first talent show performance was a ballet routine with my older sister. In middle school I sang a solo and performed a comedy sketch with friends. In high school I relegated my performing to theatrical productions, but still took the stage as the talent show emcee for two years in a row. Talent shows were my jam. I think I loved them so much because they are inevitably quirky- a first grader dancing ballet right before a high school rock band takes the stage- and that quirkiness is awesome. Its worth celebrating, because its who we are: a quirky community, full of unique and surprising talent. 

So, I think its wonderful that very soon Laura's Center for the Arts will once again host the South Shore YMCA’s second annual talent show. Last year was a great event and there's no doubt that this year will be another afternoon worth celebrating. What talent could you contribute to the show? Do you sing in the shower, dance around your living room, or make people laugh? Here’s your chance to show off those hidden talents! Not to mention, all proceeds go to the Annual Support Campaign- even more reason to join the fun. Space is limited, so register now! Open to all ages!

Auditions: Thursday, March 6, 5PM - 8PM
Rehearsal: Saturday, March 15, 9AM -12PM
Performance: Sunday, March 16, 4PM*
Participation Fee: $25 per act
*Tickets for performance are $5.00 for individual/$25 for family and will go on sale March 1st.

Contact Linda Montoya with questions: lmontoya@ssymca.org
Appropriate music and dress is required, acts are limited to 2 ½ minutes. One person per group is required to register.